When I was a child, my parents went to great lengths to protect me from things that they thought would hurt me. I don’t mean things like sharp corners and scissors – I had more than my fair share of skinned knees, stitched chins, and bruises, in spite of them telling me to walk not run, and dressing me in white skirts. I mean things that they thought would hurt me emotionally.

My beloved grandfather lived with us in a house across the street from the school. When I was six, he died. But I didn’t know about it for a while. When an ambulance was called to take him away, it was recess time at school. My mother phoned the school and arranged for me to be called into the school building on some pretense so that I wouldn’t see the ambulance. They waited until after dinner that night to tell me he had “gone.” Then they cleaned out his bedroom, painted the walls, and moved me into it, for which I was grateful because I’d slept on a cot in the living room until then. But we never talked about him much after that.

When I was fifteen, my father died. He had a heart attack while lying on our couch. I didn’t know that’s what was happening and was sent to bed so I wouldn’t see the ambulance arrive. He never came home. I wasn’t allowed to visit the funeral home or attend the funeral. My mother wouldn’t talk about him much after that.

Aside from my mother’s difficulty with emotions, keeping me away from those life experiences didn’t protect me at all; it taught me that there were things I wasn’t capable of dealing with. I’ve dealt with – and accomplished – a great deal in my sixty years. And I’m proud of that. But sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I’d found my spirit and my voice earlier. I wonder how much more I could have done, and how much stronger I’d be, with more confidence in my abilities, without fearing the unknown, and if I’d done something else with all those minutes in which I imagined and worried about what might happen next.

In Naomi Aldort’s column in this issue, she writes: “Shielding a child from reality does not help her grow up emotionally stronger. On the contrary, it teaches her fear of life.” Somehow, I didn’t make that mistake with my own daughters, who are both strong women who embrace life rather than fear it.

As we struggle to keep today’s kids safe in a world that can seem much scarier than the one in which both I and my daughters grew up, I hope we can remember to allow them to experience life fully. That’s as much a part of their education as learning algebra.

Wendy Priesnitz is Life Learning Magazine’s Founder and Editor. She is the mother of two grown daughters who were unschooled, as well as the author of ten books.

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